 | Faster, Cheaper, Scalable A small team of graduate researchers has returned to the Love Lab with a mission: generate and test preclinical materials to help develop an affordable, accessible COVID-19 vaccine for large-scale production on a lightning-speed timeline. Although there are efforts underway across the globe to manufacture vaccines in the hundreds of millions, billions of doses may be necessary. To address this gap, the researchers are deploying a strategy developed under a Grand Challenge for ultra-low cost vaccines and are now simultaneously testing their first candidate component for a vaccine and optimizing the manufacturing process. The concurrent approach allows the team to develop vaccine components with manufacturability in mind from the start and potentially compresses the timeline from benchtop to full-scale production. |
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Critical Analysis
As head of a COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and co-director of the acute care and ICU section at Boston Hope, Michael Yaffe offers his perspective as both cancer researcher and intensivist/trauma surgeon on the evolution of emergency care during this crisis and beyond. |
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Sussing Out Susceptibility
A team including Alex Shalek, KI member and recently named Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award recipient, is using gene expression data to identify specific types of cells targeted by the coronavirus behind the COVID-19 pandemic. Their study’s results, published in Cell and reported on in The Boston Globe and the NIH Director’s Blog, could be used to guide future treatment of the disease.
This work was supported in part by the MIT Stem Cell Initiative. The team recently received an award from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to study how cells in the airways of pediatric patients respond to SARS-CoV-2 and common respiratory viruses. |
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Improving Treatment for Liver Cancer
Anderson Lab technology plays a crucial role in the development of a new combinatorial therapy for liver cancer. In a study published in Molecular Therapy, the group’s lipid nanoparticles were used in conjunction with siRNA and chemotherapy to target key proteins involved in cell death, selectively killing cancer cells in animal models.
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Balancing Act
MIT senior and former Anderson/Langer Lab researcher Steven Truong brings his experience as a biological engineering student home in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the resident biomedical expert in his immigrant family, Truong balances schoolwork with medical challenges, language barriers, and a pressing need to combat misinformation.
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Weight Loss and Pancreatic Cancer
Along with his former KI mentor, Jacks Lab alum and collaborator Mandar Muzumdar is a senior author on a study investigating obesity’s role in pancreatic cancer progression. The work, partly supported by the Lustgarten Foundation, appears in Cell and examines the effects of genetically-engineered and dietary induction of weight loss on tumorigenesis.
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High-Capacity Viral Diagnostics
A new CRISPR-based diagnostic platform simultaneously performs thousands of tests to detect viruses, including SARS-CoV-2. In a study published in Nature, researchers adapted microfluidic technology developed in the Blainey Lab and supported in part by the Bridge Project to create chips that can run thousands of tests flexibly configured across different numbers of samples and viruses. |
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Nothing to Sneeze At
Sabatini Lab postdoc and pulmonologist Raghu Chivukula used cell culture and electron microscopy to unravel the mystery of a rare genetic mutation behind an unknown lung disease. His 2019 Image Awards winning image shows the “airway in a dish” that proved the foundational model for the eventual diagnosis. |
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